FIGURE SKATING

FIGURE SKATING; In Difficult Week, Kwan Steps Aside for New Winner

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

Published: March 28, 2004

DORTMUND, Germany, March 27—
If this does turn out to be Michelle Kwan's final world championships, she will have no trouble remembering it.

For the first time in her decade-long international career, she was penalized by the judges for running long in her short program. And when she skated onto the ice at the Westfalenhallen and prepared to start Saturday's free program with only the slightest chance of winning another gold medal, she was soon sharing the stage with a masked male exhibitionist who had leaped from the stands and skated to center ice before stripping down to a tutu and his bare chest.

''It's been a very tumultuous week for me; different,'' said Kwan, who quickly left the ice because she said she was afraid the man might be armed.

He was not, and after the intruder (later identified as Ron Bensimhon of Montreal) was removed from the premises by slow-to-react security forces, Kwan's week would finish differently, too. In her 10 previous world championships, Kwan had won five gold medals and three silver medals. On Saturday she settled for her first bronze, despite receiving six perfect scores of 6.0 for presentation for her free program set to music from Puccini's opera ''Tosca.''

Kwan set herself up for disappointment by skating poorly, by her standards, in the qualifying round and by finishing fourth in the short program. She was much better Saturday, completing five triple jumps cleanly, but she still finished second in the free skate to the surprise gold medalist, Shizuka Arakawa of Tokyo, who went first in the final group of six and whose clean free program was the most technically difficult of the contenders with its opening triple lutz-triple toe-double loop combination jump.

Kwan's American teammate Sasha Cohen, the leader heading into Saturday's free program, again failed to skate her best under pressure, losing control of a planned triple salchow jump late in her program and landing awkwardly on two feet after only two revolutions. But Cohen, 19, did end up with the silver medal, her first medal in a major global event.

''I could have been better on the last program, but I did a lot of good things here,'' Cohen said.

Arakawa, 22, had never come close to a major medal until Dortmund, finishing eighth last year in Washington. Though she was landing her first triple jumps when she was still in elementary school, she said her maturation was slowed because she was still involved in her studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. But her performances have improved rapidly since she decided last year to train in the United States. She first worked with Richard Callaghan, the former coach of the 1998 Olympic champion Tara Lipinski. Last month she joined forces with the Russian Tatyana Tarasova, the sport's most consistently successful coach, who is based in Simsbury, Conn.

''Tarasova is a champion maker,'' Arakawa said. ''I thought that what I needed was to go into the competition with a very strong feeling and desire. I thought that Tarasova would give me that strong feeling.''

Tarasova actually started the season as Cohen's coach. But they split in December after Cohen, who had dominated the early Grand Prix season, fell twice in the Grand Prix final in Colorado Springs. Cohen then hired Robin Wagner, Sarah Hughes's former coach.

Last month Tarasova received a phone call from the Japanese federation president, Katsu Hisanaga, asking her to help Arakawa. ''To tell you the truth, it was a very difficult decision for me,'' Tarasova said. ''I didn't want to do it, but my assistant coach Maia Usova was putting too much pressure on me.''

Usova and her former partner Aleksandr Zhulin won the world ice dancing title in 1993 under Tarasova's guidance, and Tarasova is now the first to coach world champions in all four skating disciplines.

''We worked hard on her spins; we changed the approach to her jumps; we changed the step sequences, and we worked very hard on her breathing technique during the program,'' Tarasova said of Arakawa. ''Every day I came to the practice, I was amazed at how much Shizuka had learned from the previous day and absorbed the knowledge given to her.''

Now, Arakawa will have to adjust to being the first Japanese skating world champion since Yuka Sato in 1994. Kwan and Cohen will have to work to keep up with the improving technical standard of the women's skating. While Arakawa was completing her triple-triple-double and receiving one 6.0 for technical merit, Kwan and Cohen could only muster triple-double combinations. The Japanese 16-year-old Miki Ando, who finished fourth in her first world championships, has completed a quadruple salchow in juniors, although she did not attempt it Saturday.

Kwan is still uncertain whether she will skate competitively again at this level. ''I'm enjoying myself; I love to compete,'' she said. ''I have to make a decision on that but not right now, right after the moment.''

Photo: Shizuka Arakawa of Japan executed seven triple jumps during her free-skating program to win the world championship in Germany yesterday. (Photo by Agence France-Presse Getty Images)